Who ARE the Everyday Athletes?

Who Are the Everyday Athletes?

"The body is the source of all energy and initiative," said Plato. "Life is movement,” said Aristotle. “Athlete" derives from the Greek, meaning to "contend for a prize" as the ancient Greeks did in their sports and games. The most common definition of the athlete is “one who is highly trained or highly skilled in exercises, sports, and games.” But the Greeks understood the definition we’ve forgotten, "One who takes part or is capable of taking part in exercise, sports or games." Whom does that leave out?

One of my heroes is Dr. George Sheehan. A cross-country runner in college, he became a cardiologist in Red Bank, New Jersey. After years of inactivity, he began running again in his 40s. His book Running and Being is a classic. When I ran the Boston Marathon in 1990, Dr. Sheehan gave a presentation for the runners. Afterwards I thanked him for his many great books and encouragement. He graciously signed my race number. It was Dr. Sheehan who taught me, “We’re all athletes. It’s just that some of us are in training, and some of us aren’t.” I wish I’d said that! But I believe it, and I champion the notion. My goal is to help those “not in training” to start and continue, while also helping those in training stay on the PATH (more on that later). With the rarest of exceptions, we can all bring enjoyable physical activity into our lives and keep it there.  

In workshops to help those not yet in training, I’ve posed the question: how many athletes are here today? Regardless of crowd size, few raise their hands, even when I know walkers and runners are in the audience. Why do so few hands go up? Too many of us do not see ourselves as athletes for two major reasons. First, we link the term “athletic” with coordination, speed, strength, and agility. If you learn to catch a ball early on, you are “athletic” and not one of those dreaded klutzes. The second reason is that we associate “athlete” with the elite professionals and Olympians we watch on TV. These highly skilled, rare motor geniuses—they must be the real athletes.

My mission is to shift the paradigm from the elite athlete to the everyday participant. The term "everyday athlete" is an antidote to the misguided view that only elite athletes count. It invites participation regardless of athletic talent, past negative experiences, or current level of activity. It reaches out to every person picked last for the schoolyard basketball game. The "everyday athlete" calls to the countless adults who’ve made that New Year’s resolution to “start exercising and get in shape” but have dropped out by the end of February, discouraged about living a physically active life.

How we think about ourselves matters! Pat Conroy, author of The Great Santini, played college basketball for the Citadel in South Carolina. He was a scrappy point guard. He said, “There was a time in my life when I walked through the world known to myself and others as an athlete. It was part of my definition of who I was and certainly the part I most respected.” Too often we believe we must become really good at a particular sport to be considered an athlete, but this is just not true. We can choose to see ourselves differently. We can choose to think of ourselves as everyday athletes. 

Now to the heart of it: What is the PATH of the everyday athlete? I like to use the following acronym:

Participate, Advocate, follow Teachings with Heart. Snazzy, right?

Everyday athletes participate in active living, a way of life that weaves enjoyable physical activity into the fabric of daily routines. They know that exercise (the dreaded “E word”) is merely one of many ways to be active. The everyday athlete knows that all kinds of movement count: playing sports, walking or biking to work and school, household chores, physical activity at work, gardening, dancing…so many options!

As everyday athletes participate regularly in physical activity, they become better equipped to advocate for themselves and their communities. They use proven behavior-change strategies to carve out the time and enlist the social support needed to be active during their day. They feel the benefits. Everyday athletes are important role models in their families and neighborhoods. Many take the next step of civic engagement and advocate for activity-friendly communities with sidewalks and bike lanes, neighborhood parks and recreation equipment, community sports programs, and effective physical education in schools. 

Everyday athletes follow teachings with heart, not just the scientific evidence of health benefits, but individual behavior-change and public-health strategies, personal stories, mythology, passages from great writers, even memorable movie scenes. (Cue the Chariots of Fire score!) Expert teachings and cultural inspiration are tools at our disposal for enjoying movement and sticking with it.

So who are the everyday athletes? Let’s get some help from Jack Nicholson at the end of a great old movie The Last Detail.  He argues with a bartender in New York who won’t serve an underage sailor. Things heat up. The bartender says, “I’ll call the Shore Patrol.” Nicholson’s character explodes, “I AM the mo****f*****g Shore Patrol!!!”

It's your choice to see yourself as an athlete — no one else's opinion matters. Or, as Jack Nicholson might say, WE ARE the Everyday Athletes!